


Made of Magic

by andthenshesaid-write (ladyknight1512)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Demons, M/M, Magic, Warlocks, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 13:40:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12583120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyknight1512/pseuds/andthenshesaid-write
Summary: Yuuri is a warlock whose power malfunctions when Vicchan, his familiar, dies. The night he loses Vicchan he unknowingly summons Victor, a demon, who tracks him down and tries to help him get his power back. Featuring Phichit the Imp; Yuri, a (lesser) god of madness; and Makkachin, the Actually-Immortal Hellbeast.





	Made of Magic

**Author's Note:**

> This is my fic for the [2017 Victuri Big Bang](https://victuri-big-bang.tumblr.com/). Thanks to the mods over there for running a great event. I've loved being a part of it.
> 
> Much love to [smolrey](https://smolrey.tumblr.com/) for the art. I've embedded it below but the original post is [here](http://smolrey.tumblr.com/post/166999170445/heyo-more-angst-cuz-yall-like-pain-right). Go and reblog and give it all the love because it's perfect!
> 
> Thanks to my IRL BFF, N, who listened to me rant and rave about this fic, who got excited with me, who held my hand when it was hard and who believed from the very beginning that it would be great. I don't think I lived up to your expectations but you kept me going even when I didn't want to anymore. I love you.
> 
> Finally, thanks also to my other IRL friend, Other N, who said, "Write a story about immortal-hellbeast Makkachin!" Sorry, I wrote this instead. I hope you can find something else in it to enjoy. ;) <3

When Vicchan died, Yuuri cried like he hadn’t cried since he was a child. He sat in his bathroom, arms curled around his knees, the tiles from the tub cold against his spine and he called his mother.

“I feel like a part of me has died,” he sobbed into the phone.

She made a soft humming noise, reminiscent of a lullaby he’d half-forgotten, and said, “A part of you _has_ died. Vicchan was your familiar. You were a part of each other. Now he’s gone.”

“Am I going to feel like this forever?” His eyes felt dry and raw from all the tears.

“No. One day you’ll find a way to make it right again. For now, just go to bed and get some sleep.”

She didn’t lie and say he would feel better in the morning, and for that he was grateful. A part of him wanted it to hurt, because Vicchan was gone and it only seemed fair, but at that moment all he wanted was to forget. So when he hung up the phone, he washed his face and went out into the city. He wasn’t sure what kind of trouble he could find in Detroit, but he knew it was out there somewhere; he’d had to deal with the consequences often enough.

When he woke up in his bed the next morning, he didn’t remember anything.

*****

Returning to Hasetsu was the best thing for Yuuri, in the end. After a year spent moping around Detroit, failing at even the simplest spells and tasks Celestino assigned to him, Yuuri had decided that what he really needed was to go home, indulge in his mother’s cooking and lick his wounds. Hasetsu was a small town and it already had Minako; it didn’t need him in the way that a large city like Detroit needed a number of warlocks to keep it ticking over. Honestly, if Yuuri spent the rest of his days working at the onsen and never spoke another word of magic in his life, that would be fine with him.

Minako met him at the train station. He dropped his eyes so he didn’t have to meet hers and neither of them spoke until they were outside, the cold wind biting at the skin around his eyes. It was unseasonably cold for Hasetsu at that time of year, as it had been for Detroit. If Yuuri didn’t know any better, he’d have thought that he’d brought the cold with him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” he mumbled.

She heaved a sigh. “I understand why you didn’t; it was hard, what you went through. But I wish you’d called anyway. I had to hear it from your mother.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

She shook her head and tightened her hand around the strap of her bag. “Stop apologising. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

But it wasn’t that easy. Yuuri was apologetic by nature and Minako had taught him everything she knew, then put him and Vicchan on a plane to the other side of the world so he could learn all the things she didn’t. He owed her more than what he’d given.

“You know,” she said, as Yu-topia came into view, “I thought you’d have a stronger signature after all that time in a big city, practising every day. I hope Celestino has been working you hard enough.”

“Oh, yeah…” He cleared his throat.

Even with his gaze firmly on the ground, Yuuri could see the way her eyes cut towards him and narrowed.

“You _have_ been practising every day, haven’t you, Yuuri?”

“…When you say ‘every day’…”

“Yuuri!”

He buried his chin deeper into his scarf and hurried up towards the front entrance of the inn, Minako stomping along behind him. Normally he would have gone around the back to the family entrance, but the sooner he got away from Minako, the better.

The air throughout the resort was humid and heavy, so Yuuri pulled his scarf away as soon as the door had closed behind them. Not a moment later, there was a loud gasp and his mother came rushing towards him, bright-eyed and grinning.

“Yuuri!” Her hands clasped in front of her chin. “I’m so glad you’re back! We’ve all missed you, even Mari. Thank you for picking him up, Minako.”

Minako grumbled and folded her arms across her chest. “He hasn’t be practising, Hiroko.”

Yuuri hunched his shoulders. “I tried but it didn’t feel right without Vicchan. And then nothing worked. I messed up even the easiest spells.”

“And you thought not practising was going to help?”

Hiroko made a placating gesture with her hands. “Well, you’re home now. Maybe that will help. I’m sure Minako would be happy to help you find your feet again.”

Minako snorted.

Yuuri sighed and grabbed the handle of his suitcase. “I’m going to put my things away.”  
He trundled off through the main room and down the back halls until he reached his room which, when he opened the door, was exactly as he’d left it, from the bare walls and neatly-made bed, down to the order of the books on the shelves. All the surfaces were spotless, so his mother must have dusted in preparation for his return. He set his suitcase aside, closed the door and slumped back onto his bed.

He was home, for the first time in five years. He felt younger here, as if he could blink and find he’d stepped back in time. In a moment, he could open the door and find a Mari who was just learning the ropes of running the onsen, Vicchan running through the gardens and feel the strength of his own power flowing through his veins. Every day he’d spent in Detroit that life had felt like it was slipping further and further away. But here it was so close he could almost touch it. He wasn’t sure which he preferred.

The door opened without warning.

“So you really are back,” Mari said, leaning against the jamb. “How long are you staying?”

He shrugged. “Maybe forever? I don’t really have anywhere else to go.”

“And what are you going to do? Help around the onsen? There isn’t _that_ much to do around here.”

“I wasn’t doing that much in Detroit either.”

Mari grimaced. “You’ll figure it out, Yuuri. But don’t get so caught up in what you’ve lost that you get stuck there, okay?”

*****

Yuuko visited the onsen the day after Yuuri got in from Detroit. Yuuri breathed a subtle sigh of relief when he saw that she had come alone. He loved her daughters, of course, but there were three of them and they were exhausting even in small doses.

“Let’s go for a walk on the beach,” she said and tugged his hand to get him moving. “After that big city and the plane, some fresh air will do you good.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t in contact more while I was away,” Yuuri said and tucked his hands into his pockets. The air was cold so they set a brisk pace.

Yuuko smiled brightly and shook her hair out of her eyes. “It’s okay. You had a lot going on. I understood. But it’s good to have you back.”

“Have you spoken to Minako?”

Yuuko bit her lip and jerked her head in a quick nod. “She told me about your magic, about how you haven’t been practising.”

“It was too hard, after Vicchan died. I didn’t want to cast and then when I did nothing worked right so then I didn’t want to use it even more.”

Yuuko stopped and dug her toe gently into the sand. “Do you miss it?”

Yuuri had known Yuuko his whole life. She and Vicchan had been the constants of his childhood. He’d never done anything magical without telling her about it afterwards. So he couldn’t lie to her. She would know and it wouldn’t be right.

“Sometimes, now,” he said. “Especially being back here. I remember how it felt the first time I did a really big spell and that makes me want it back. But what does it matter if I can’t do the spells right anyway? A warlock who can’t do magic isn’t much use to anybody.”

“Nobody here needs you to do magic. We have Minako. We get by just fine. If you miss magic, you should do it for yourself, at least until you find your feet again. Maybe the more you get back into it, the easier it will be.”

“Maybe…”

She glanced around and then pulled him further up the beach, where they weren’t in danger of being hit by the tide. She nudged him down until he was seated with his legs folded under him and then lowered herself down to sit in front of him.

“Do a spell,” she said, hands folded neatly in her lap.

“What?!”

“Do a spell. Right here, right now. Come on, Yuuri. You just said that you miss it. The only way to stop missing it is to just do it.”

“But what if it goes wrong?”

She shrugged. “Don’t choose a spell that’s likely to set the town on fire. Just believe in yourself. You’ll be fine.”

He sighed, knowing there was no way he was going to get out of this. Yuuko was one of the most stubborn people he’d ever known and if she wanted him to do magic, she wasn’t going to rest until he’d done it. He would just try to do a little spell. It probably wouldn’t work anyway. What harm could it do?

He closed his eyes and took a slow breath in. He could hear the waves rushing in and away from the shore, and it felt like it mirrored the ebb and flow of his own power. It was there, buried and dimmer than it used to be, but it was there. He tingled when he reached toward it, as if his magic were an entity that had missed him while he’d been away.

He tugged a string of power away and considered it – his magic had always been a strong, vibrant blue, but now it was delicate and pale, almost sickly. But it was quivering and eager and he wasn’t going to do a big spell anyway.

Yuuri’s body felt miles away now, but he remembered being on the beach and shivering with the cold. He could do a warming spell, one of the first young warlocks and witches learned. Surely that couldn’t go too badly wrong?

He centred his mind, narrowing his focus down to the one thing he wanted – for a gentle, steady warmth to envelop him and Yuuko. The string of power in his mind pulsed once, twice, and then scattered. Deeper inside him, the rest of his magic tensed and then eased. Somewhere, Yuuko gasped and Yuuri’s eyes peeled open.

Hanging in the air around them were tiny balls of light, yellow and flickering like the flame of a candle. Yuuri grimaced.

Yuuko’s hands were covering her mouth and her eyes were wide and shining. “They’re so beautiful, Yuuri!”

“I was trying to make the air warmer.”

“But this is still something! I’m sure if you keep trying you’ll get back to being able to do the spells you want to do! You should speak to Minako. You know she’ll be happy to help you.”

Yuuri rubbed his hands together. Now that he was back in his own body, he was aware of the cold like he hadn’t been before. He felt stiff with it, because he hadn’t been moving. “I’ll think about it. For now, let’s go back before we freeze.”

*****

Hasetsu got hit by a snowstorm a few days later. It was unusually late in the season for it but that didn’t matter. Yuuri’s mother had him out at the crack of dawn with the shovel to clear the walkways.

He’d been going at it for a while so at first, he thought it was some kind of snow-shovelling induced hallucination, because he could have sworn that he’d just seen a dog out of the corner of his eye. When he looked up and saw nothing but the snow-blanketed entrance to the inn, Yuuri shrugged and returned to his shovelling. Except then it happened again. Out of nowhere, a brown figure appeared and, this time, when Yuuri glanced up, he caught a wagging tail disappearing around a corner.

It couldn’t be…but it must be…somehow…

“Vicchan.”

He dropped the shovel and took off around the building. There was a brown blur just ahead, turning into the building. He skidded to a stop at the closed door, hesitating for just a moment, before pulling it open and heading into the hallway. Mari was walking by with a stack of freshly cleaned towels and he grabbed her elbow.

“Mari, did you see where the dog went?”

She frowned. “What dog?

“It was brown. I’m sure it came through here. It looked like—”

In the distance, there was a familiar bark and Yuuri turned so fast his neck twinged.

“There! Did you hear it?”

Mari looked concerned now. “…Yuuri? Are you alright?”

“It’s Vicchan, Mari, I’m sure of it.”

“But Vicchan is dead.”

“He’s here. I know it’s him.”

He ran off down the hall, following the barks and dodging the patrons, until he reached the hot springs. The dog was sitting in front of the door leading outside, tail wagging against the wet floor and tongue lolling out. Now that he was closer, it was obvious that Yuuri had been wrong. His heart dropped and his stomach clenched. This dog shared Vicchan’s curly, brown coat and intelligent eyes but was larger than Vicchan had been.

Yuuri sighed. So it wasn’t Vicchan, but this was still a dog that had somehow wandered in and its owner would probably be looking for it sooner or later. It wasn’t wearing a tag that Yuuri could see but maybe it was hidden in all the fur. He stepped closer but the dog turned and pawed open the door and walked outside before he could even reach out a hand.

Yuuri shook his head. At least there wasn’t anywhere else for the dog to go out there.

“There you are, Makkachin! Did you find him?” a voice from outside said.

Yuuri stumbled to a halt, halfway through the door. He hadn’t realised there was anyone out here. And it sounded like this person owned the dog. No one had told him someone was bringing their pet with them. It wasn’t really something they allowed.

He peeked around the door and then crept out. “Umm…excuse me?”

The man sitting in the onsen looked up and grinned. He was…beautiful. There was no other word for it. A defined jaw, silver hair that flopped into his eyes, which were bluer than any Yuuri had ever seen. Yuuri’s jaw dropped.

“Hello, Yuuri!” the man said and stood, dripping, completely unconcerned about his nakedness.

Yuuri hastily averted his eyes and then froze, his mind stumbling over the fact that this stranger somehow knew his name.

The man held out a hand, as if to beckon Yuuri closer. “I’m going to help you get your magic back.”

*****

The man’s name was Victor.

Victor was a demon.

Makkachin was his immortal hellbeast.

Yuuri hid his face in his hands and tried to calm his internal screaming.

The three of them and Mari were sitting around a table in one of the smaller banquet rooms. Victor was shovelling food into his mouth because when a demon landed on her doorstep, Hiroko’s first instinct was to feed it.

“Tell me again where you came from?” Mari said. She had been the one to find them, having followed Yuuri on his mad dash through the inn.

Victor swallowed and smiled. “Yuuri summoned me.”

“But I didn’t!” he cried, looking up from his hands. He turned to Mari in desperation. “I didn’t, I swear. I would remember!”

“The first time you tried you only did a half job,” Victor said. “Probably because you were wasted. But it was enough to bring me closer to this dimension. The spell you did a few days ago was enough to finish it and here I am!”

“But I didn’t _mean_ to summon you!”

Victor shrugged and started digging around his bowl to gather up all the remaining grains of rice. “Well, I’m here now, and if you want to get your magic working again you might as well let me help you.”

Minako confirmed it when she arrived. “If you summoned him, Yuuri, and you must have otherwise he wouldn’t be here, then you have to be the one to send him back.”

“What if I can’t?”

“Then you’re stuck with him.” They both looked over to where Victor had fallen asleep on the floor, curled around Makkachin. “Honestly, there are worse demons you could be burdened with. At least he seems cheerful enough. I knew someone once who summoned the gloomiest demon you’ve ever seen. She rained on everything.”

Yuuri sighed. “I’ll prepare a room for him.”

*****

When the imp Phichit had been stranded in Detroit a few years ago, Yuuri hadn’t given him much thought at first. It happened sometimes; imps came over to make some mischief and wreck some havoc and then went back to where they’d come from, leaving the warlocks to clean up their messes. But when they couldn’t get back, they were stuck, sometimes for years, before they found a way to get home again.

When Phichit got stuck he had sought out Celestino and, through him, had met Yuuri. Through Phichit’s persistence and despite Yuuri’s unfailing politeness, they eventually became friends. Thankfully, Phichit’s favourite thing about the human realm was social media, so it was easy for them to stay in touch now that Yuuri was back in Japan.

Phichit was harmless. Mostly.

“Phichit,” Yuuri whispered, blinking against the sudden brightness of his computer screen in the dark of his bedroom, “have you ever heard of a demon named Victor?”

“Sure,” he said, scratching at the base of one of the horns poking out of his hair. “Everyone’s heard of him. He’s kind of a big deal. Why?”

Yuuri’s mouth pulled to the side and his eyes dodged Phichit’s. He leaned closer to the screen and lowered his voice further, as if speaking any louder would bring Victor into his room.

“He’s here. As in, he’s sleeping in the room next door. Him and his dog. I accidentally summoned him.”

Phichit’s brown eyes widened.

“Phichit! What am I going to do?!”

“Well, why did you summon him? There must be a reason he’s there.”

“He says he’s going to help me get my magic back. The piece of it that’s missing anyway.”

Phichit hummed. “He probably could, you know. He’s good at that sort of thing. Maybe just let him help you. I mean, he’s there now. He can’t go anywhere. Might as well make the best of the situation.”

It was easy for Phichit to say, Yuuri decided later, as he lay in bed trying to sleep. Everyone just expected Yuuri to invite Victor completely into his life to do whatever Victor planned to do. But Yuuri had never even heard of Victor until that day. And what did Victor even know about Yuuri? Nothing, probably. So why did Victor even care? It wasn’t like demons _had_ to come when they were summoned. The stronger ones could resist and from what Phichit had said, Victor was fairly strong.

The next morning came too soon. Yuuri was woken by a pounding on his door and enthusiastic barks.

“Yuuri!” Victor sounded too happy for it to be seven in the morning. “Yuuri? Are you awake?”

Yuuri grumbled into his pillow and pulled the blankets over his ears. “No.”

There was a moment of silence, then the sound of the door opening and the click of nails across the wooden floor. Makkachin’s wet nose snuffled at the top of Yuuri’s head.

“Yuuuurrrrriiiii,” said Victor. “I think you’re lying.”

Yuuri sighed and flung the blankets back so he could sit up. He scrambled for his glasses and shoved them onto his face so he could see Victor’s politely stern face in full HD.

Victor grinned and clapped his hands sharply twice. “Good! Now we can begin. Quickly! Up! Up!”

They commandeered a room in Minako's studio. Yuuri wasn't sure when Victor had had the time to ask her, or if Minako had just offered, but he wasn't complaining. As a child, he had spent almost more time at Minako's than he had at home. He had learned and performed his first attempts at magic within those walls. It felt fitting to be going there to relearn everything he'd forgotten or put aside or lost.

Victor collapsed in a heap on the floor, arms propping him up with his legs splayed out in front. Yuuri settled on the floor in front of him with his legs crossed and Makkachin flopped in a corner, much like Vicchan used to do.

Yuuri closed his eyes, let his shoulders relax and inhaled a deep, slow breath. The whole situation was bizarre but this part was familiar to him, at least. Minako had taught him how to centre himself and his mind when he was just starting out and Celestino had encouraged the same thing. Doing it now felt like slipping on a pair of soft, old gloves, that had molded themselves around the bumps of his fingers after years of wear. He could already feel the familiar calm descending over him.

"What are you doing?" Victor said.

Yuuri's eyes popped open. "...What do you mean?"

Victor shrugged. "You know, with the slow breathing and the closed eyes and the quiet. What are you doing?"

Yuuri frowned. "Focusing my mind. So we can do magic."

But Victor waved a dismissive hand. "You don’t need to do any of that and besides, you're not doing magic, at least, not today."

"I'm not?"

"Of course not. You're nowhere near ready for that. You've been ignoring your magic for over a year. You don't really think it's just going to do whatever you want now, do you? You need to get to know it again."

Yuuri shook his head. "You're talking about it like it's alive."

Victor raised an eyebrow. "It beats like a heart and weakens like an unused muscle. It comes when you call and flickers out when you're sad. And you think your magic isn't alive?"

"It's just...I've never heard anyone talk about magic like that before. Minako and Celestino, I mean."

"That's because witches and warlocks are mortal. Mortals see magic as a tool. A very useful tool, yes. A tool that they grow attached to and love, almost like a pet. But I am a demon, almost as close to being made of the essence of magic as it is possible to be. I understand magic in ways you can't even begin to imagine. But I will teach you as much as I can and, when I'm done, you will be stronger and closer to your magic than ever before."

Victor's voice was smooth like honey and the way he talked about magic made something weaken inside Yuuri, who had never thought of magic as anything other than something that was just _there_. It had always been inside him, part of him, like his heart or his brain or his lungs. Victor spoke about it like it was both a friend and a force to be reckoned with. Yuuri wanted that. He wanted to be able to look inside himself and see a power that he respected and that respected him back.

"OK," Yuuri said, folded his hands neatly in his lap. "If we're not doing magic today, then what are we doing?"

Victor's mouth quirked in an odd little smile, as if Yuuri had passed some kind of test. "Tell me about your magic," he said. "Introduce us, if you will. We're going to get to know each other very well before all this is over."

It was a strange request, but Yuuri had a feeling it wasn't going to be the weirdest thing he did while Victor was hanging around.

"What do you want to know?"

Victor shrugged and lay back on the floor, folding his hands over his stomach. "Anything. Everything."

It wasn't much to go on and he'd never talked to anyone about his magic this way before. Yuuri wracked his brain. There must be something he could say. He'd been living with it his whole life, after all. Surely he'd picked up something about it somewhere along the line? But the longer he sat there in silence, the more his mind whirred in blank circles. His palms were starting to sweat and there was a rushing sound building in his ears.

Just as he could feel his breaths starting to shorten, he blurted, "It's blue!" A huge sigh of relief rushed out of him.

Victor's head turned to face him. "Blue?"

Yuuri nodded, proud of himself. He wasn't completely clueless. He _had_ picked up something about his magic, even if it was the most basic fact he could think of.

"What kind of blue?" Victor asked.

Yuuri felt his growing smile freeze. "Uhhh..."

What kind of blue was his magic anyway? He'd never really paid much attention, beyond noticing when he was with Yuuko the other day that it was paler than he could remember it ever being. What sort of blue had it been before everything started going wrong and he abandoned it?

"It was...dark?"

Victor raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "Are you sure?"

Yuuri pressed his lips together and fixed his gaze on his hands, which were twisting around each other in his lap. "It's not as dark now as it used to be."

"So it's currently light blue? What sort of light blue? Describe it for me."

This would be a lot easier, Yuuri thought, if Victor would stop looking at him like that, like Yuuri had all the answers. Wasn't Victor supposed to be there to help him? This wasn't helping.

Yuuri shrugged, his mind scrambling for words he wasn't even sure he had. He'd never given much thought to colours before. Blue was blue. Purple was purple. Red was red.

...Except that Victor's eyes were the kind of blue that "blue" couldn't encompass on its own, so there must be a word out there to describe their exact shade.

"It's kind of...translucent, right now," he finally says. "Sort of fluttery and not quite there."

Victor hummed and then nodded decisively. "You need to understand your magic better. I can't help you if you don't know what it was or should be, or if you don't understand what it is now. Go. Figure it out. We'll talk about it again tomorrow."

Yuuri frowned. "What...that's it? You're just going to send me off with homework?"

"Do you want your magic back or not?"

Yuuri sighed. He supposed he should be grateful that Victor was willing to help him at all, even if he was a demon that Yuuri had unintentionally saddled himself with. If that meant he needed to find the exact words to describe his magic, so be it. How hard could it be?

*****

_Really_ hard, as it turned out, because it wasn't just the colour he had to deal with.

Yuuri spent most of the night on his computer, trawling through "different shades of blue" image search results, in the hope of finding the exact colour he could see when he closed his eyes and went deep into his mind. The closest he came was a very pale powder blue, so pale it was almost grey. Once he'd settled on that, he looked further, trying to find the colour his magic used to be before he'd "abandoned it", to use Victor's words. That search was harder; no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't quite remember what his magic used to look like and he spent a lot of time second-guessing himself. But he kept coming back to cobalt blue, a colour that tugged at something in his gut and tweaked somewhere in the back of his mind. Staring at it calmed his mind and made him remember Vicchan, and it was that that decided him in the end.

He reported his findings to Victor proudly the next day.

"Great, but what else?" Victor said and Yuuri frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"There's more to your magic than just the colour. I want to know everything and, more importantly, I want _you_ to know everything. I want to know what it sounds like, how it feels when you use it and when it's still and quiet."

"How am I supposed to figure that out?"

Victor shrugged and folded his arms. "I don't know. Talk to it?"

Victor was crazy, Yuuri decided, as he trudged back to the onsen. Talk to his magic? Honestly, he'd never heard anything so stupid in his life. It was one thing to imagine his magic was alive, but another thing entirely to actually treat it as such. He shared this with Yuuko when he ran into her in town.

She looked hesitant. "He might be on to something, though, right? He's supposed to be an expert on this stuff."

"According to him."

"And Phichit. Didn't you say he vouched for Victor, too?"

"Phichit hasn't even met Victor, only heard about him through the demon grapevine. Who's to say Phichit hasn't just heard what Victor's been spreading about himself?"

Yuuko frowned. "Why would Victor spread rumours about being able to help a warlock get their magic back? I doubt this is something he just does all the time."

"So why did he come here, then? I didn't even specifically summon him or do the proper rituals so he would have been able to resist if he'd wanted to."

"I don't know, Yuuri, that's something you'll have to ask him...after you and your magic have had a chat." She giggled and walked away with too much of a spring in her step for his liking.

*****

Nothing worked. Days passed and turned into weeks and no matter what Yuuri did, he couldn't figure out what it was he was supposed to be looking for. He meditated, took long walks, thought about Vicchan, played with Makkachin, chatted with Victor, worked around the onsen, ate meals with Minako, but nothing provided any enlightenment about his magic. He closed his eyes and reached out for it a few times but sometimes it seemed like he couldn't reach far enough, and others it felt like his magic was shrinking back away from him.

Victor seemed to have endless patience. Every morning he would ask Yuuri if he'd made any progress, and then would spend the day chatting with the locals around the inn, relaxing in the hot springs, hanging out with Minako and playing with Makkachin. Every night he ate dinner with Yuuri. Sometimes Victor asked leading questions about magic, probably to get Yuuri to tap into something specific, but other times he just asked Yuuri about his life and his friends and his hobbies. Honestly, it all seemed kind of pointless to Yuuri.

"I thought you would be a bit more...hands-on," Yuuri said one night towards the end of their meal.

"That's not really how it works," Victor said, picking some lint off his trousers. "I can't lead you into your own mind, just make you more aware of what exists inside you."

"So when you said you would help me get my magic back...?"

"Well, you _will_ have your magic back once I'm through with you, but I can't be held responsible for the assumptions you made about how I would achieve that."

Yuuri hummed. "You demons should come with terms and conditions."

Victor grinned. "Satisfaction is guaranteed!"

It was a whim that took Yuuri to the beach a few days later. The ocean had always been a comfort to him. There was something about the way it kept coming into the shore and going out again, constant and steady, a force that had existed since the dawn of time and couldn't be stopped by anything, even magic.

He'd missed it while he'd been in Detroit but, apart from the day he'd come here with Yuuko, he'd been avoiding it since his return to Japan – it reminded him too much of Vicchan, who had loved to run through the waves and dig his paws into the sand.

But maybe it would help him get in touch with his magic. Being around the onsen and Victor hadn't helped; there was no harm in trying this.

He sat halfway up the beach, his legs folded beneath him. It was warmer than it had been a few weeks ago but he still rubbed his hands together and pulled the arms of his sweater down to cover them.

Yuuri closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He'd never paid much attention to how he accessed his magic before but this time he kept a part of his consciousness held back to observe.

He used to assume that the first moments felt like sinking into himself, like a stone dropped into a pool, but now he saw that that wasn't quite right. It was more like holding his breath and ducking his beneath the water in a bath and then opening his eyes – he could see the world but it was distorted by the ripples and the hair floating in his eyes. But it felt calm and quiet, like he was hidden from the rest of the world.

His magic was there, in the centre of him, but marginally less pale than it had been when he'd cast the spell with Yuuko. It beat steadily and reached out tendrils towards him, beckoning him closer, then rushed back into itself before reaching out again.

Like the ocean, Yuuri thought. In and out...in and out, in time with his breathing.

He crept closer until it felt like his mind was standing on the edge of an abyss. The air seemed to get warmer the closer he got to it. He didn't know how deep it was – he'd never gotten close enough to look – but now he wanted to know. Was there a bottom that he couldn't see or did it stretch endlessly, past the confines of his body and into the ether?

He plunged in without stopping to think about the consequences, just threw himself into the centre and dropped through. He would have expected the magic to part around him, like water, but instead it passed through him and filled him up. Distantly, he felt his physical body tingle and his hairs stand on end but he was too distracted to pay much attention to that because he'd never seen anything more beautiful than his magic at that moment.

It sparkled and shone in a way that he hadn't been able to see from the outside. It was like diamonds or stars or the sunlight bouncing off a crystal, and it stretched out around him for as far as he could see. How had he never known that something like this existed inside him? Why had no one ever told him? Minako and Celestino – hadn't they known how seeing this would make him feel? He'd never felt so powerful and the last time he'd felt this at peace, Vicchan had still been alive.

As soon as he'd thought it, the answer came to him. There was danger in this. Already he felt like he could just close his eyes forever and float away and never have to deal with the outside world again. All the pain and the anger and the hopelessness he'd ever felt would just cease to exist.

But he couldn't do that to his family and friends, or to Victor and Makkachin, who would be trapped in the human world forever if Yuuri didn't open his eyes.

He had to tear himself away – the magic clung to him, dug in like talons in his flesh to draw him back – but he stumbled out onto the shore of his mind, stopped to catch his breath and then he opened his eyes.

The world hadn't changed; the sky was the same blue, the ocean made the same sound, the sand felt the same. Everything around Yuuri was exactly as it had been before he closed his eyes, but _he_ was different. He felt alive, could feel the magic flowing through him in a way that he'd never been conscious of before.

He needed to find Victor.

Yuuri pushed himself to his feet and took off running up the beach. He stumbled as his toes dug into the sand and he pinwheeled his arms to keep his balance, nearly taking out a cyclist as he reached the road.

He ran full-tilt towards the onsen; he didn't know how, but Yuuri knew instinctively where Victor was. There was something tugging him onwards, like a hook behind his belly button.

He was gasping for breath by the time he burst through the doors of Yu-topia. Everyone turned to stare but he ignored them and continued on through the halls until he reached Victor's door. He slid it open, stumbled inside and bent over to catch his breath, hands propped on his knees.

Victor was reclined on the bed, reading, with Makkachin tucked up against his side. Victor looked up and raised an eyebrow. "Alright, Yuuri?"

His voice was so mild, completely at odds with the possibility of Yuuri heaving his lungs up onto his bedroom floor.

Yuuri nodded and sucked in a huge breath to say, "I saw my magic."

Victor sat up straight and even Makkachin raised his head. “You saw it? When? How?”

“Just now, on the beach. I went into my mind, further than I’ve ever gone before. It was beautiful, like the ocean. I didn’t want to leave it and I don’t think it wanted me to leave either. It was like it tried to grab me as I was pulling myself out.”

Victor frowned. “What do you mean you pulled yourself out? Out of your mind?”

“No.” Yuuri shook his head. “Out of the magic.”

Victor’s eyes widened and then his face darkened; the air around them grew heavy. “You went _into_ your magic? By yourself?! Yuuri! How could you do something like that? Do you know how dangerous that was?!”

Yuuri deflated all at once and wrung his hands. "I thought it would be worth the risk. I haven't been able to make it work right since Vicchan died, and you kept saying that I needed to understand it better. And now I do. I had no idea it was like that."

"And what if you had gotten stuck? What if I hadn't been able to get you out?"

He shrugged half-heartedly. "I didn't really think about that at the time. I know now how bad it would have been for you and Makkachin, though. You two would have been stuck in this dimension without me to send you back. I'm sorry. I won't do it again."

Something flickered in Victor's eyes but he shook his head. "Do you think that matters to me? What about your family? Your friends? What were they supposed to do, just get over it? Put your body in a room and just hope that one day you opened your eyes again?"

Hearing it like that made Yuuri's stomach churn, but he couldn't regret his choice, not when it meant that he might be able to do magic again. He hadn't wanted to for so long but now that it was back within reach, it was all he wanted. It was like Vicchan dying had killed a part of Yuuri, but Victor coming to him had brought it back to life. Had Yuuri known that on some, deep elemental level? Was that why he had tried to summon Victor all those months ago? He would probably never know for sure, but the thought of it comforted him.

Yuuri pursed his lips and straightened his spine, forcing his hands down by his sides. "You're right. It was dangerous and stupid, but nothing bad happened. I came back and now I'm more connected to my magic than I ever was before. I don't regret it and I feel great. I want to do a spell."

Victor sighed and then shook his head slowly. "Not today, Yuuri."

"But–"

"No." He made a sharp gesture through the air with his hand. "You're still too close to the magic. Using it now, while it's still so close to the surface, could drag you back under. We'll try something tomorrow."

Yuuri felt his face brighten. "Promise?"

"Yes, but just something small to start with." He sounded tired all of a sudden and Yuuri was struck by a worrying thought.

"Does being here, in this dimension, wear you out?"

"What do you mean?"

Yuuri shrugged. "Does your power diminish the longer you're here? Is there some source in your dimension that strengthens you? Are you going to get sick if you stay here too long? Phichit told me that happens sometimes, but he's been here for years and he's never had any trouble."

"Oh." Victor's mouth quirked into a smile. "It's kind of you to be worried for me, Yuuri, but there's no need. Other, lesser, demons need to be closer to a source of pure magic to maintain their strength but I'm not like them. And Phichit is an imp - imps get their power from and feed off mischief and trickery, which is in abundance in this dimension. Phichit could live here his whole life and never see any noticeable difference in his powers."

Well, that was a cheery thought, at least. Phichit was the person – or being, Yuuri supposed – he was closest to. Knowing that he wasn't going to just evaporate into a puff of smoke, or worse, get slowly sicker until he died, eased fears Yuuri didn't even realise he'd had.

What about Victor and Makkachin, though? He hadn't known Victor even nearly as long as he'd known Phichit, but he'd become so used to having him around that the thought of him leaving left Yuuri breathless. What would his days look like without Victor trailing around after him and Makkachin nosing into his things? How had he become used to them so quickly? And, more importantly, now that he was well on his way to having his magic back and working properly, how was he supposed to come to terms with the fact that he had to send them home?

*****

There was an itch under Yuuri's skin the next morning, something thrumming through him, as if his magic knew that the day had finally come when he might be able to use it again, properly, as he'd been meant to use it his whole life.

He glanced at his phone – it was too early for Yuuri to be awake, but he rolled out of bed anyway because the thought of continuing to lie there, staring at his ceiling, only made the itch worse.

There was only silence from inside the room when Yuuri knocked on Victor's door. He knocked again, with more force, and tapped his fingers against his leg while he waited. Still nothing, so he slid the door open and peeked inside. Victor was curled around Makkachin, asleep. His mouth was slightly open and his hair was so ruffled that it stuck up straight at the back. Yuuri swallowed a giggle and dug his phone out of his pocket to take a sneaky photo. Everyone talked about Victor as if he was some big, scary demon king; having proof that that wasn't true made something in Yuuri's stomach flutter.

With the photo taken, he crawled onto the end of the bed. "Victor," he whispered. "Victor."

Makkachin raised his head and looked down at Victor's face, then huffed at Yuuri, as if to say, "Good luck."

Yuuri sighed and fisted his hands into the bedsheets to stop himself shaking Victor awake. "Victor. Victor! VICTOR!"

Victor jumped and flailed. He propped himself on his elbows and let out a mighty yawn, blinking blearily. "Whatimezit?"

Yuuri shrugged. "Five thirty?"

"In the morning?"

Yuuri nodded.

Victor groaned and dropped back into his pillow. "Too early. Back to sleep."

"Victor! You said we could do magic today!"

"It will still be today in three hours."

Yuuri chewed his lower lip. "Fine. I'll just do it myself. It's not like I've never done magic before. I was a practising warlock in Detroit. I don't need supervision."

He made it halfway down the hall before he heard the thump of bare feet on the wooden floor chasing after him. He turned just in time to watch Victor stick his head out of his door.

"Give me ten minutes."

*****

They ended up back on the beach, because it was too early to visit Minako's studio and because Yuuri was past pretending that he wasn't drawn to the ocean.

They sat opposite each other, legs folded beneath them, and Makkachin padded a circle around them before flopping down on Victor's right.

"Let's start small," Victor said, "and we'll build up to bigger and better things over time. Try to make a globe of light, no heat, just light."

"A globe of light? That was one of the first things I learnt how to do. Can't we do something else?"

Victor's eyes narrowed. "We've talked about this. Magic is like a muscle. You wouldn't run a marathon after doing nothing but sitting on your couch for a year, would you? Besides, if it's so easy, you shouldn't have any trouble."

Yuuri sighed and nodded, closing his eyes. The itch was still there, gentler now but almost like a quiver in the back of his mind or deep in his gut. He reached out for his magic and it came to his hand almost before he'd finished the thought.

He was aware of his magic in ways that he'd never been when he'd used it before. He had never paid much attention to it, outside of what he wanted it to do, but now he could see the ripples in its surface and feel the cool, silkiness of it as it wrapped around his fingers.

Before, he had to meditate and block out the outside world and visualise exactly what he wanted his magic to do. Now, he knew that wasn't necessary, in the same way that he knew that the sky was blue. His magic was a living thing, but it was still a part of him; it knew what he knew and wanted what he wanted. He didn't need to force it into a specific shape, he just needed to tell it what he wanted.

"Light," he thought and knew even before he opened his eyes that it had worked.

When he did open his eyes, the globe of light hung in the air between him and Victor, perfectly at Yuuri's eye level. The light was bright and clear, but not blinding, and it illuminated Victor's face so that his eyes seemed to glow.

Victor reached out towards the globe and his hand hovered over it. "No heat."

"No," Yuuri said, because he didn't need to touch it to know that the globe had no temperature at all.

With just another thought, the globe moved to the right in a slow, smooth movement. It would stay there until Yuuri told it to move again or extinguished it, or he became too tired to keep it going.

Victor eyed him. "You're not feeling it at all, are you?"

Yuuri shook his head. "Minako and Celestino have always said that I have better stamina than any other warlock or witch they know."

"Even still," Victor said, "a few weeks ago you couldn't do the simplest spell without something going wrong, and a few weeks before that you weren't doing magic at all. Even something as easy as this light should have you feeling some kind of strain but there's nothing. It's extraordinary. _You're_ extraordinary."

Yuuri blushed and dropped his gaze to the sand in front of his crossed ankles. "Thank you."

"You know," Victor said, "when I asked you if you wanted your magic back, you didn't actually give me an answer."

"I had to get my magic back," Yuuri said with a shrug. "If I didn't, you'd be stuck here forever."

Victor was quiet for so long that Yuuri thought that was the end of the conversation, but finally Victor said, "That's not an answer either."

Beside them, Makkachin dug his claws into the sand and Yuuri swallowed hard. He unfolded his legs and tucked his chin into his knees.

"I really loved Vicchan," he said. "I remember when he came to me. I was seven and he was waiting for me at the school gate, just sitting there. Everyone kept stopping to try and pat him but they couldn't and I knew it was because he was mine. He just kept looking straight at me, like he knew all my secrets, and then when Mari and I got close enough, he stood and I picked him up and I carried him all the way home. I loved him more than I've ever loved anything else in my whole life. I never thought he would leave me."

"Most familiars don't leave their humans," Victor said, softly, gently, "but sometimes they don't have a choice – they just get called back. Sometimes they leave because it's the right thing to do, because they know that their human can't grow anymore if they stay."

"How long have you had Makkachin?"

Victor's mouth quirked in an automatic smile. "Centuries. But I'm a demon and he's a hellbeast – we don't feed off each other the way warlocks and familiars do. Hellbeasts only attach themselves to demons they find particularly powerful or noteworthy but it doesn’t happen very often. He stays because he wants to stay and I let him because I enjoy his company."

"Don't you worry that he'll decide to leave one day?"

Makkachin looked up from his digging, as if he was just as interested in Victor's answer as Yuuri was.

"Sometimes. But he's his own being. He has to live his own life and I have to let him. We don't own each other. I would miss him if he left, though. I'm not sure what I would do with myself if he weren't around."

Yuuri had never considered that Victor might have those sorts of feelings, or any feelings at all really. He was a demon, magic personified, but at that moment he seemed completely human. He had worries and thoughts, and he felt love and fear, just like Yuuri did. If Victor could be honest and vulnerable, then surely Yuuri could be too.

"Sometimes," Yuuri said slowly, "I feel like it's wrong to enjoy magic, or even use it, without Vicchan. After he found me, I never did magic without him, until I summoned you."

Victor was quiet for a long time, running his fingers through the sand. "You should never feel guilty, Yuuri, for who or what you are. Magic isn't something you have, it's something you _are_. That's never going to change, whether you use it or not, whether Vicchan's here or not, whether me and Makkachin are here or not. Yes, a piece of you died when Vicchan died, but by not using your magic you killed off other pieces. You owe it to yourself to treat yourself better. You deserve to be happy."

“Why did you even come here? I mean, when I half-summoned you, after Vicchan died. You didn’t have to. You could have ignored me.”

Victor eyed him. “Because even with that piece of you missing, your magic was like music. It was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. It called to me; I wanted to meet the person who could create something like that.”

Yuuri's breath caught somewhere in his chest. That couldn't be true...could it? Was his magic really so lovely that it could entice a demon across to the mortal plane even without the summoning ritual in effect? Especially a demon like Victor? No, it couldn’t be true. Yuuri wasn’t special, not like Victor so obviously was.

“You must have been disappointed when you turned up and all you found was me.”

Victor huffed a laugh. “Actually, you’re exactly what I was hoping for. You’re not like the people where I come from. You’re not perfect. You fail at things, but that just makes you want to try again. You care. You feel...everything. I used to be like you but that was a long time ago and time moved on, endlessly, and nothing changed and somewhere along the line I stopped caring. Before you summoned me, I thought I might never feel anything again but you changed that. With you, I feel happy and sad and angry. I feel ashamed, because I don’t think Vicchan left you because it was what you needed. I think he left you because he knew I needed you and I’m so sorry, Yuuri. I know how much you loved him.”

It should have been a lot to take in – and it was; Yuuri would probably freak out later on – but all Yuuri could hear was that Victor needed him. Yuuri had never been needed by anyone before. His parents had Mari to run the inn; Hasetsu had Minako to look after it; Detroit had a whole team of warlocks and witches dedicated to its care; Phichit had Celestino. Even as a puppy, Vicchan had been largely self-sufficient. The idea that Victor, who was powerful and independent, could need him made something warm curl up in Yuuri’s belly.

“I did love him,” Yuuri said. “I always will. But Vicchan is gone and now you’re here, and whatever it is that brought us together, I’m glad it did.”

*****

Despite his amazement at Yuuri’s power and stamina so soon after getting his magic working again, Victor said they still needed to test him with greater spells. They moved from light to heat, and then on to cooling spells. They tended herbs and plants, and replenished Yuuri’s supplies. They helped Minako deal with a troupe of goblins terrorising people on the edge of town. When Yuuri had successfully performed a number of small summoning and banishing rituals, he felt like he’d passed a final test but Victor showed no signs of letting up.

It was halfway through the afternoon, a few weeks after his magic had started working properly again, and Yuuri was tired. He’d been doing spellwork since early in the morning – a true test of his stamina, Victor had said – and he thought he’d finally found his limit. He slumped forward until his forehead rested against the floor of Minako’s studio.

“Yuuuurrrrriiiii,” Victor said and Yuuri groaned.

“Can’t we just rest for a few minutes? Everything hurts. My insides feel like they're about to become my outsides. I’m not even sure I’m fully on this plane right now.”

“You didn’t think this was going to be easy, did you? Your magic is a powerful thing. Of course it hurts.”

“Does it have to hurt so _much_?” Yuuri mumbled to the floor and pushed himself back up so that he was seated properly again.

Victor was lounging back against the floor in front of him, arms crossed behind his head. He cast a careful eye over Yuuri, as if to check that he really was alright to continue, and had just opened his mouth to speak when there was a distant rumble in the air.

Yuuri frowned. “Was that...thunder?”

Victor shrugged. “Sounds like it.”

“But –”

The rumble echoed across the town again, closer this time. Too close, given how far away it had sounded just a moment ago. The third rumble was right over the top of the building and was so loud that the walls shook with it. Yuuri shot his hands out towards the floor, as if he could somehow hold the building still. There was a bright flash of light through the windows and then silence. It wasn’t a comforting silence, though; it was heavy, like the world around them was holding its breath.

A second later, the door crashed open and flew across the room. Yuuri ducked just in time to avoid losing his head but Victor didn’t even blink as it sailed straight over his face.

Yuuri wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but when he peeked up at the entrance to the room, a slight figure was standing there. Then the figure stepped into the room and Yuuri could see him more clearly: a young man – almost a boy really – blonde hair cut in a jagged chop at his chin and flashing green eyes. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides.

“VICTOR!” the boy roared and a ripple went through the air in the room. His voice echoed in a way that mimicked the thunder of earlier, so that it felt like it was coming at Yuuri from all angles.

Victor propped himself up on his elbows and grinned. “Yuri! Hi! I wasn’t expecting to see you here!”

“You _know_ him?” Yuuri whispered and Victor nodded.

“Sure. This is –”

“I am Yuri,” the boy said, cutting Victor off with a vicious sweep of his hand, “a god of madness.”

Victor hummed. “Technically, you’re a _lesser_ god of madness.”

Yuri glared and Yuuri shrank back, hoping he might just sink into the floor if he wished hard enough.

“What are you doing here, Victor?” Yuri asked and folded his arms across his chest.

“I’ve been helping Yuuri get his magic back. I thought everyone knew that by now.”

“Of course we knew! You think we haven’t been watching you?! But it’s been months! What are you still doing here?”

Yuuri cleared his throat and steeled his spine against the green-eyed glare that swung towards him and the lip curl of distaste Yuri didn’t even try to hide.

“It’s my fault Victor’s still here,” he said.

“Yuuri –” Victor pushed himself up to sit straight.

“It took a while for me to finally get what Victor was trying to teach me, about my magic. It’s only been working right for a few weeks. I couldn’t have sent Victor back even if I’d tried.”

Yuri’s eyes narrowed, darted towards Victor and then settled on Yuuri again. “Send him back?”

“Yes. I didn’t even mean to summon him in the first place; there was no way I could do the banishing ritual properly if I couldn’t even spell myself a simple light globe without something going wrong.”

Yuri pinned Victor with a stare so unflinching, even Yuuri felt uncomfortable. Overhead, there was a low, rolling grumble of thunder.

“You told him he needed to send you back?” Yuri said and Victor sighed.

“No. I just didn’t tell him he didn’t need to.”

It took a moment to sink in but when it did, Yuuri frowned and turned to stare at Victor. “Wait...what do you mean?”

Yuri’s laugh was harsh and crackling, like electricity. “Oh, come _on_. You didn’t really think a demon as powerful as Victor could be held subject to the whims of a puny little warlock like you, did you? Sure, the trip is smoother with a witch or a warlock easing the way, but Victor can come and go as he pleases.”

Yuuri’s stomach tightened and he chewed his lower lip. He knew he should have been pleased. Victor had chosen to stay with him, despite the boredom and how long it had taken Yuuri to figure things out. That should have made him happy. Instead, he felt humiliated. How often had others told him that Victor was more powerful than usual? Victor himself had said and done things right from the beginning that implied he could do things other demons couldn’t. Even the fact that Makkachin, a powerful being in his own right, had chosen to stay with Victor for centuries spoke to Victor’s power and influence. The signs were all there from the beginning. How could he have been so stupid? And now he’d gone and embarrassed himself in front of this god of madness, who already looked at him with such disdain that Yuuri didn’t feel worthy of looking higher than Yuri’s ankles.

“I’m sorry, Yuuri,” Victor said. “I didn’t mean to lie. It just didn’t seem important.”

“It didn’t seem important to tell me that you didn’t need me at all?”

“I _did_ need you! ...Just not to get home.”

Yuri scoffed and tossed his hair out of his eyes. “This is stupid. You’ve known for weeks that your job here is done and now he knows that you’re free to go. So come on. Yakov has been bitching at everyone for months about you wasting your time down here. I’ve had enough. It’s time to go.”

The silence that followed was so deep Yuuri could hear himself breathing. No one moved.

Finally, after what felt like an age, Yuuri pushed himself up off the floor because someone had to do something. He had known all along that Victor would have to leave. It didn’t matter if Yuuri didn’t want him to go; Victor had a whole other life before he met Yuuri and he would continue to have one long after Yuuri was gone. It didn’t matter that he felt stupid. It didn’t matter that Yuuri couldn’t imagine Hasetsu or his own life without Victor anymore. Victor had come here with a job to do and he had done it and now it was time for him to go. It was the right thing to do.

“I’ll send you back,” Yuuri said quietly and met Victor’s wide-eyes head-on.

“He doesn’t need you to,” Yuri said. “Didn’t we just cover this?”

Yuuri fought back his rolling eyes. “I know but it feels like the right thing to do. You’ve done so much for me; the least I can do is make the trip back a little smoother.” He didn’t say that it felt like the closing of a chapter, like something he needed to do so he would be able to put Victor behind him and move on.

“Thank you, Yuuri,” Victor said, into the quiet, and then turned to face Yuri. “You go. I’ll see you back there.”

“I had better.” There was a crack and a flash of lightning and Yuri was gone, no sign that he’d ever been there at all.

Yuuri sighed. “Let’s do it then. We can do the ritual right here. Minako keeps the studio warded.”

“Or we could go down to the beach.”

What could be a more fitting ending than that? So they gathered their things and walked through the town side-by-side, with Makkachin setting the pace ahead of them.

There was a light breeze coming in off the ocean but it was warm now, the air growing heavier with each day that brought summer closer.

They found a relatively flat stretch of ground, a good distance away from the few other people enjoying the sunshine, and Yuuri directed Victor and Makkachin to stand close together. In the sand, he drew the symbols Minako had taught him so long ago. Then, he pulled a small pouch of salt out of his bag and used it to draw a thick circle around Victor, Makkachin and the symbols. Once that was done, he stepped back and met Victor’s eyes.

“Thank you for your help,” Yuuri said, keeping his voice steady. “If you hadn’t come here, I’d still be moping around and pretending my magic didn’t even exist. I used to love using it but I’d forgotten how much until you reminded me.”

“Yuuri, I don’t want to go.”

Yuuri sighed. Hearing that Victor wanted to stay was only going to make sending him away harder.

“You have to. You’re a demon.”

“So? There are imps who live their whole lives in this dimension. There’s no reason I can’t.”

“But what will you do? There’s nothing for you here.”

“There’s you.”

Yuuri folded his arms over this chest. “You’ll get bored eventually and then you’ll just leave anyway. It’s better for you to go now, before anyone gets any more attached.”

“I can just come back.”

Yuuri shook his head. “Don’t. I don’t want you to. If you go, you have to stay gone.”

Victor’s mouth twisted as if he was holding back words but in the end he gave short, jerky nod. “Fine. Do it then. Send me away. But I won’t forget you, Yuuri. You helped me just as much as I helped you.”

Yuuri drank them in, from the top of Victor’s head all the way down to Makkachin’s toes, pressing the sight of them into his memory so that he would never forget them. Then, he closed his eyes and called his magic to hand. Even with all the casting Victor had had him doing that day, the pool of it hadn’t noticeably diminished. Still, it came slowly, reluctantly, as if it knew what he was calling it to do. He pushed it out of himself to enclose Victor and Makkachin.

He could feel their energy brushing along the inside of his mind, where his magic slid over them. They were warm and spicy, like cinnamon, and as comforting as his mother’s hand on his face. He could feel the strength in them now, too, more than he could contain on his own if they hadn’t been holding themselves in. Even individually they could easily overwhelm him; together they would be unstoppable. Instead, they just stood there and let themselves be contained.

Before Victor, banishing spells required chants and props and a meditative state; the stronger the demon, the more effort was required. Now, they required no more effort than the lighting of a candle, even for someone like Victor. He just needed to do it, like ripping off a bandage. The longer he picked at it, the harder it would be. So, he took a breath, focused his mind, gathered his magic and _pushed_.

...It felt like slamming into a brick wall at speed. He could almost hear his teeth rattle in his skull. He groaned and his eyes peeled open to see Victor and Makkachin watching him with concern.

“Are you alright, Yuuri?”

He pressed a palm into this temple, as if he might be able to rub away the pain. “Why didn’t it work? I thought my magic was fixed.”

“It _is_ fixed.” Victor frowned. “Maybe…”

“Maybe what?”

Victor’s shrug was small and hesitant. “Maybe your magic doesn’t want me to go either.”

Yuuri thought it said a lot about his progress that he wasn’t surprised at all to hear that his magic could have its own wants, and actively fight against his instructions.

Yuuri buried his face in his hands. “Fine. You’ll just have to go on your own.”

But Victor was shaking his head. “I don’t think I should. I don’t want to go. Your magic doesn’t want me to go. We both know you don’t want me to go, no matter how much you try to deny it. So maybe I should just stay. You think I’ll get bored – that just sounds to me like a reason for us to go out and see everything there is to see in this dimension. We’re not so different, you know. You’re a warlock, I’m a demon, but we’re both made of magic and even if I just spent the rest of your life sitting in an empty room with you, I could still be happy.”

“...Yuri will be mad.”

Victor shrugged. “Yuri is always mad. Something about being a teenager for all eternity. He’ll get over it. Maybe next time he comes, he’ll stay for a while. He’ll love your mother’s cooking.”

The laugh burst out of Yuuri so suddenly it surprised even himself. “You really want to stay? Here? In this tiny town? With me?”

“Yes, Yuuri. Is that what you want?”

Yuuri’s smile was soft and accepting, no fight left in him now. “Nothing would make me happier.”

He kicked a foot through the line of salt on the sand and let Victor out.


End file.
